


Any Reason

by orphan_account



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Student/Teacher, C137cest, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, M/M, Obsessive Behavior, Teacher-Student Relationship, though not really cos it's dreadfully AU just using the tag so rickmorty fans can find this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 06:01:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12227184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Alternate Universe, Dimension 912-K - they say a Rickless Morty is one of the saddest, loneliest creatures in the galaxy, and they'd be correct. In Dimension 912-K, an uncomfortably old, twenty year old freshman enrols in Seattle U, trying to pick up the pieces of a life in pieces. Morty Smith is desperate to learn, desperate to be the best that he can be, desperate to get away from the shadow of his mother, with a thirst to prove himself unlike anything else. He has an unhealthy fixation, and studying chemistry is starting to feel a lot like chasing a dream when his studies have finally landed him in a lecture hall with the one and only Rick Sanchez.Clinging to his book, he realised that he had to get Professor Sanchez's attention, any reason would do.





	Any Reason

**Author's Note:**

> This is the "take a break" fic I do when I'm not focusing on You Broke Him, You Fix Him, so updates for this will be a lot more sporadic. Warning for angst, creepy/lonely/sad Morty, a dark!Beth, and a generally sad background story for this lil mortmort. Uncharacteristically short chapter for me, since this was originally a tumblr exclusive.

 

 

Morty Smith, alternatively known as Specs, or Bug – has always been a little odder than everybody else. Always a bit too short, a bit too waif-like, couldn’t grow facial hair even with the best will in the world. It was like he was casually a magnet for all the things that could go wrong in someone’s early childhood. It’s a miracle he’s even gotten to university, all things considered. He felt self-conscious the moment he’d gone to his first lecture. He’d felt like he was the oldest person in the room with how late he’d ended up getting to university, but at least he didn’t look it.

 

“You don’t wanna sit there,” a boy – Spencer, who he met at orientation said. Morty shook his head negatively, swinging his brown messenger bag onto the desk and hastily taking out a notebook and some pens.

 

“Yes I do,” he said, with a little frown and unwittingly cementing himself as the weird student, even here, refusing to shed the awkward reputation that had haunted him throughout high school. He knows why Spencer is saying it, he thinks he’s being nice. Warning him, even – but no. Morty wanted to sit here, front and centre in this strangely small lecture hall. He went out of his way to be early just so that he could. 

 

“Your funeral,” Spencer shrugs - leaving Morty to go and sit a few rows further back. They think he’s got to be a bit weird to want to sit close in Professor Sanchez’s class, hell, there’s a none too discreet warning from older students during Welcome Week that it’s not a good idea. Even weirder is when after the first lecture, Morty isn’t dissuaded, and insists on doing it every time. Nobody can fathom why - Professor Sanchez is, simply put,  _gross as hell._ Sitting in front put you in close contact with his grossness, the pungent smell of alcohol that followed him like a plume of aftershave, the spit from his periodic belches which it feels like he does every other sentence. His breath always smelt like booze mixed with vomit, and maybe smoke - on a good day. But Morty didn’t care, he just needed to get Professor Sanchez’s attention,  _any reason_  would do.

 

It’s probably evident of some wider issue, God knows how much emotional shit Morty has buried under the hatchet. He’s gotta have some sort of problem - the fixation wasn’t healthy. Sitting there, just gormlessly chewing his pencils and practically salivating over his notepad, breathing heavily and following his professor’s movements determinedly. He has a laptop but, he finds the clicking distracting when he could be hanging onto every syllable that drips from Professor Sanchez’s mouth instead. Most had switched off mentally after enduring labs, which wasn’t as fun as it sounded, as first year entailed droning over procedures, safety measures, observation and data collection. Morty is one of few whose awake after Professor Gilligan’s three hour snore fest.

 

“Alr _–UURRRP–_ ight turds, we’ve got two hours on – “ he glances at the drunkenly scribbled timetable on his desk “– _Oh fuck me_ , atomic and molecular structure,” he swore - he hated first year classes, he really, really did. It was basic, annoying shit. “If you’re lost by the end of this class, drop it, because this is - _hic_ \- basic shit,” he starts talking molecular shapes, and letting his tangible boredom seep through.

 

“Bonding configurations are readily predicted by valence-shell electron-pair repulsion theory, - if you look in your overpriced textbooks, it’s called  ** _VSEPR_**. It’s based on the fact that electrons repel each other, and so you can expect that the bonds and non-bonding valence electron pairs associated with a given atom will prefer to be as far apart as possible,” he gazes out at the lecture hall to see whose brain’s turned off. Surprisingly, there’s very few - even though he loathes teaching, and even more, loathes teaching it out of a book, there’s no real way to make certain  _basic_  classes interesting, and he’d rather weed the idiots out quickly. 

 

His eyes meet with the gormless looking kid upfront - brown curly hair, square, thick-framed glasses, mustard coloured shirt with a thick collar and a disposition which screamed hipster douche the moment the professor laid eyes on him. He didn’t look like he was paying much attention - he seemed more spaced out and vacantly following his pacing form up and down the lecture stage more than he was focused. With malicious glee, and some small sense of schadenfreude, he decides to pick on the kid. He probably wouldn’t make it halfway through the year. He doesn’t seem the type.

 

“The bonding configurations of carbon are easy to remember, since there are only three categories. You - hipster in the front,” he looks dead at Morty, who drops the pencil out of his mouth dumbly. “Any guesses?” - he wants to know if anyone even bothers to do the reading, and is surprised when the boy stutters out an answer. 

 

“T–t–tet–tetrahedral, t-t-trigonal a–ahn..” he feels himself withering under the expectant stare. There’s something intense about it that makes him want to slink deeply under his desk. He wanted Professor Sanchez’s attention, but when he had it - he didn’t know what to do with it, beyond stutter and blush. His mind goes blank when he raises his singular, heavy brow, like he’s waiting for him to fuck up. “Linear!” Morty gasps out quickly, before sinking down in his seat slightly.

 

 _‘Huh, so he’s not as dumb as he looks, or at the very least, studies’_ \- Rick mused.

 

“Correct,” he says stiffly, ignoring the sigh of relief that escapes the young man. He drones on, just as bored as he feels - but feels that intensity that the Smith kid constantly levelled at him. At first he was amused, as nobody ever willingly sat in the front unless classes were large enough that year that every seat needed to be filled, but the little weirdo was always there. Always. 

 

After class though, he realises why. Morty packs up extra slowly, tucking his notes away with care and double checking he has the notebook he uses for Mathematics 122 with Dr Lingard, before steeling himself and heading down to where his professor was. 

 

It’s not that Morty is a genius or anything, he just works really, really hard - and studies extra hard to try to understand the lofty concepts thrown at him. He used to be a solid C student at best back in school, then… then he started failing - and the level of effort he’d had to put in to get into AP Science and AP Math had been nothing short of gargantuan, it’s why he’s the oldest freshman in class, at the age of twenty, but Rick Sanchez is the very reason he’s even  _in_ university in the first place. He simply cannot keep it to himself for the next four years. He cant.

 

“Was something unclear?” he was about to refer to his earlier impatient warning - about dropping if the basics were too much - but falls silent when he sees a familiar book being nervously pulled out of the student’s messenger bag. It’s got an all black, shiny, embossed cover - with the words ‘ _Defining the Multiverse’_  in neat white script. 

 

“No, n-no, I got it, I just - I mean - I was wondering, if you - you wouldn’t mind signing this? Um, please,” he cringes at how awkwardly it comes out, and all of his mental rehearsing had gone to shit under Professor Sanchez’s calculating gaze. Morty’s holding his book - the only one he’d ever written beyond academic papers hidden behind paywalls. It was a thick guide on all the possible ways to test the existence of the multiverse, a love-letter to physics and cosmology that waxed lyrical about how to test for multiverses existing, but nowadays feels like an embarrassing yearbook photo. He was a scientist, not a writer - so even his verbose nature made him cringe whenever he looked at it. He stuck to academic papers after that. 

 

“Jesus kid, you actually read that?” Professor Sanchez snorts, he’d be surprised if Morty understood most of it, and in truth, there’s still huge parts he doesn’t understand, but would like to. 

 

“I–I like how um, how real everything you…you wrote about was. Not like…not like quantum mech– when…where things - universes just…exist in mathematical space, y’know? It’s like…it’s real,” he cringed, and imagined his AP Math teacher having a heart attack at his words. He felt the stare he was getting intensify and he couldn’t help but look down at his feet. Why was he so  **bad**  at talking to people? All these years of being alive and he still hadn’t gotten to grips with it. The professor probably thought he was a kiss-up idiot, but this was important to Morty, so he forced himself to stay in place.

 

“I mean - there’s… there’s still a lot of stuff, I don’t - I don’t get, like how…  _how_ you tested the cosmic microwave background for universe collision signatures - just…just that you did. I mean - you - you proved that other universes exist! You didn’t just talk about it - while people wasted time looking at gravitational waves. And - and you discovered a  **new element**  - you’re like.. amazing!” he blurted out in a rush, before realising how long he’d actually gone on for, and flushed darkly. He was so out of his depth here, there was so much in that book he didn’t understand, but Rick Sanchez is the only reason he’s in Seattle U - he’s the only reason he started giving a shit about science and math and…anything, really. He stops short of admitting that - or it’ll get too personal - and possibly weirder, and Morty isn’t sure if he can cope with that.

 

The look Morty’s giving him is eerily reminiscent to the looks he’d gotten in his band days from a groupie - which personally made far more sense to Rick - but he can see the boy finally caught himself mid rave and was suitably mortified. He brushes off how surprised he is and takes the book from Morty’s hand silently, scribbling his name opposite the index before deciding to address it directly to the young man.

 

“Jesus kid, suck my dick any harder and I won’t be able to walk,” he smirked, ignoring how scarlet the boy went  “-but yea–urrrp– I’m the greatest. That’s mathematical  _fact -_ and you little shits are lucky to be taught by me. Now - I better not find this shit on Ebay, got it?” he said, handing the book back. He could tell from how worn the cover edges were that it had been something he must have read quite a lot. There’s plenty of more exciting books so, for the life of him, Rick can’t fathom why the obsession with his. It wasn’t exactly light reading even if it was pure scientific gold in written form. 

 

Morty looked aghast at the very notion of selling it, and delicately puts it back in his book bag.

 

Rick pauses for a moment - as much as he hates, loathes and despises students coming to see him, to ask him stupid fucking questions that could be solved via an email, or simply studying harder, he looks over at Morty critically - up and down, as though mentally deliberating something.

 

“My office hours are from 4 to 6 on a Tuesday and a Friday. If you want to talk cosmological signatures. I’ll be there. You might not be as dumb as you look,” he gives him a look - one that spells out _‘don’t disappoint me_.’

 

Morty almost trembles on the spot, swallowing thickly.

 

“Now scram, Professor has a headache.”


End file.
